Julia Michaels celebrated the holidays with family in a unique way — she and her father got matching tattoos on December 28, 2017. The chose the Golden Snitch from the Harry Potter series inked in vibrant color. Julia’s tattoo is on her upper right arm and her dad’s is on the inside of his forearm.

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Julia Michaels got this tattoo on her upper back which says “Kiss Here” from artist London Reese in August 2017. She describes how the process of co-creating a design with a tattoo artist is similar to writing songs as part of a team. Julia and her co-writer Justin Tranter have written major hits for artists like Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez. She told Vevo:

You’re trusting somebody to put something so permanent on your body, and with songwriting it’s the same. You’re having somebody come in, and you have to trust this person completely to help you articulate words into a song. And then there’s a trust there. Because of that, you become really close friends with them. Like London, who does a lot of my tattoos.

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Julia Michaels has a tattoo on the side of her neck that says “I am ____ .” as a tribute to her journey of self-discovery. Since transitioning for being a behind-the-scenes songwriter to being a performer; she is happier, has fewer panic attacks, and feels that she has become a more authentic version of herself. She told Vevo:

I feel the most like myself that I ever have, now…I feel like every day I’m getting more and more comfortable in my skin and comfortable as an artist.

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Julia Michaels has an interesting tattoo design on her right wrist consisting of three V-shapes and three circles. You can see two triangles in the negative space even though they are not fully formed. This optical illusion is why the design resonated with Julia. It represents the power of the human mind to see beyond what exists on the surface.

People like to make fun of me for it because they’re like ‘oh Pac Man!’ But this is actually a symbol for perception. It has two triangles and three circles, but nothing is actually fully formed. Even though the brain perceives it as whole, and it’s not, which I think is really interesting how you can perceive something as whole even when it’s not.

This design, called the Kanizsa triangle, is a famous optical illusion created by the Italian psychologist Gaetano Kanizsa in 1955.

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Julia Michaels had the words “speak up” inked on her throat on May 28, 2017 as a reminder to say what she thinks and be confident.

“I think the [tattoo] that probably best represents me is the ‘Speak Up,'” she told Vevo. “And I think now more than ever I have the opportunity to have an opinion, and to have a voice, and that I should speak up.”

“I have a tendency to make myself feel really small in vulnerable times. And I just have to remind myself that I’m not. And to say what’s on my mind and know that people are not going to judge me for it. And I’ll feel stronger because of it.”

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Julia Michaels has a faceless woman tattooed on her right upper arm. The portrait has a geometric pattern on her face, while the rest of it is very vibrant and colorful. The ink piece was done by artist Jim Sylvia across multiple sessions in February and March 2016.

Back then Julia was still writing songs for other artists and the concealed face symbolizes herself being unseen. She told Vevo:

I have this faceless woman here. It kind of, at the time, was describing my anonymity in the music industry…I’ve always kind of felt like this is who I am on the inside. Everything’s just kind of changed so much this year that I feel like this is me, this is me showing myself, this is me at my most vulnerable.

She made the transition to being a performer after she wrote her breakout hit “Issues,” a song that was so personal she couldn’t imagine anyone else singing it.

“I’m a very nervous person, and I’ve never really been much of a confident person. I think it took a song like ‘Issues’ for me to realize that [being a singer] was something that I wanted, and something that I’ve suppressed because I’m so fearful of it,” she told Jimmy Fallon.